Treefrog Treasure – BrainPOP Educatorshttps://educators.brainpop.com
Free Tips, Tools, & Resources for EducatorsFri, 09 Dec 2016 21:53:24 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.5.4How Kids Play Games: Teachable Moments in Refraction and Treefrog Treasurehttps://educators.brainpop.com/2013/06/21/how-kids-play-games-teachable-moments-in-refraction-and-treefrog-treasure/
https://educators.brainpop.com/2013/06/21/how-kids-play-games-teachable-moments-in-refraction-and-treefrog-treasure/#respondFri, 21 Jun 2013 16:33:28 +0000http://educators.brainpop.com/?p=31295Guest blogger Eleanor O’Rourke of the University of Washington shares her reflections on a study of how children and adults play two of GameUp’s games, Refraction and Treefrog Treasure. Adults and children play games differently. While this may not be surprising, learning about the differences in their play can help designers create better educational games... See more »

Guest blogger Eleanor O’Rourke of the University of Washington shares her reflections on a study of how children and adults play two of GameUp’s games, Refraction and Treefrog Treasure.

Adults and children play games differently. While this may not be surprising, learning about the differences in their play can help designers create better educational games and help teachers use games effectively in the classroom. As part of a project at the Center for Game Science, my collaborators and I studied how children and adults play two GameUp games developed by the Center, Refraction and Treefrog Treasure. We found many behavioral differences that highlight a wide variety of teachable moments in these two games.

Refraction and Treefrog Treasure were both designed to teach fractions. Treefrog Treasure teaches numberline concepts, while Refraction focuses on how to create and add fractional values. Refraction requires more strategy and problem solving than Treefrog Treasure, but both games require some planning ahead.

To compare how children and adults play these two games, we looked at the behavior of two different online populations. We collected anonymized gameplay data from BrainPOP’s GameUp, which attracts primarily children, and from Kongregate, a free flash game website that targets adults. We analyzed the moves that players make in these games to see whether Kongregate players (adults) displayed different behavior than BrainPOP players (children).

We found that the two populations play Refraction and Treefrog Treasure very differently. BrainPOP players make more mathematical mistakes in both games that Kongregate players, choosing incorrect numberline values more often in Treefrog Treasure and creating incorrect fractional values more often in Refraction. BrainPOP players also are less strategic than Kongregate players. It took them longer to jump through tricky sections of Treefrog Treasure, and they repeated moves and reached dead ends more often in Refraction puzzles. While we would expect children to have more trouble with fraction concepts and strategic thinking than adults, understanding how children approach these types of problems is valuable.

The areas where children struggle in Refraction and Treefrog Treasure highlight teachable moments. Our findings show that these games are great platforms for teaching strategy and problem solving, in addition to teaching fraction concepts! In Refraction, children struggled with strategic thinking, and often made moves that made it impossible to solve the puzzle. Educators could use this as an opportunity to teach students how to break Refraction levels into subproblems and work methodically. In Treefrog Treasure, children had trouble jumping through tricky parts of the levels. This provides an opportunity to teach about thinking ahead and planning. One of the great benefits of games as educational tools is the wide diversity of skills that players use to solve puzzles and beat levels, providing many different opportunities for learning!

]]>https://educators.brainpop.com/2013/06/21/how-kids-play-games-teachable-moments-in-refraction-and-treefrog-treasure/feed/0Treefrog Treasure: Preparing for Playhttps://educators.brainpop.com/teaching-tip/treefrog-treasure-preparing-for-play/
https://educators.brainpop.com/teaching-tip/treefrog-treasure-preparing-for-play/#respondThu, 24 Jan 2013 16:56:21 +0000http://educators.brainpop.com/?post_type=teaching-strategy&p=25986Make sure you introduce the concepts of both fractions and number lines to your students prior to the Treefrog Treasure game, in order to reduce their learning curve.

]]>https://educators.brainpop.com/teaching-tip/treefrog-treasure-preparing-for-play/feed/0New Game on GameUp: Center for Game Science presents “Treefrog Treasure”https://educators.brainpop.com/2012/11/30/new-game-on-gameup-center-for-game-science-presents-treefrog-treasure/
https://educators.brainpop.com/2012/11/30/new-game-on-gameup-center-for-game-science-presents-treefrog-treasure/#respondFri, 30 Nov 2012 11:00:25 +0000http://educators.brainpop.com/?p=24210Our latest game is Treefrog Treasure. The game was designed to teach players how to place fractions on a numberline. . .

The Center for Game Science (CGS) is part of the department of computer science at the University of Washington. We’re made up of a group of designers, software engineers, artists, and students, including both PhD students and undergraduates in technical and educational fields. We have six games currently in development, and all of them targeted at different aspects of supporting measured and assessed learning through games.

The Making of Treefrog Treasure:

Our latest game is Treefrog Treasure. The game was designed to teach players how to place fractions on a numberline. The core group working on the game from the beginning included only 7-8 people, so we were really all involved in coming up with game design ideas. This means ideas were coming not only from game designers, but also artists, developers, and researchers in both Computer Science and Education. We went through a number of prototypes that were able to address our math goals but weren’t engaging enough for players. These prototypes included pinball-like games where players bounce/shoot a ball onto a numberline. Finally, we realized that a platformer game (think Super Mario Bros.™) where the character could stick to walls and jump into numberlines was the most engaging prototype and we agreed that a frog would be a natural choice for that character. We add various gameplay mechanics over the course of the game to keep players interested from a pure gaming standpoint, including: bouncy surfaces, slippery surfaces, dangerous lava, portals, and more.

One of our main teaching goals was to provide scaffolding to aid players that are struggling by giving them more and more help if they are unable to solve a given numberline problem. On a simple numberline with two endpoints and a fractional target, the player has the opportunity to collect 5 gems by jumping into the correct point on the first try. If the player misses their first try, the line is divided into the appropriate denominator and they are able to collect 3 gems. If they continue to miss, additional labels are provided and eventually the target fraction is displayed on the line to show the answer. This design lets any player complete a level without requiring math reasoning, but quickly players realize that the most effective way to beat the game is to use their knowledge of fractions to get the answer right on the first try.

Early Prototype

In early levels, we introduce the player to numberlines by simply having them jump to a target on a line with no numbers on it, just a bullseye. Then we move on to simple pattern matching by trying to match a given shape to a line filled with various shapes. Eventually we show different representations including pies, integers, mixed numbers, improper fractions, decimals, and percentages. We’re hoping this approach will make the game accessible for players who have never seen a numberline before, and we’ve seen positive results when playtesting with kids as young as kindergarten-age.

Overview of CGS Research:
Our research at CGS is focused around creating the best learning experience for students and providing the best support for teachers. One current project looks at how we can make Treefrog Treasure dynamically adapt the progression of numberline concepts based on each student’s performance in the game. Here, the game looks at how the student did on past levels, and selects the next challenge so that it will maximize both learning and engagement. The goal is to dynamically create a personalized progression for every student.

Another current project involves the development of a support tool for teachers called the Teacher Portal. This tool provides a web interface where teachers can see detailed information about the progress of their students in the game. If a teacher assigns a set of levels in Treefrog Treasure to her class, she can immediately assess performance across a variety of concepts through this Teacher Portal. We are working with teachers to refine our design and make this an effective tool to support the use of our games in the classroom.

More Information:
To learn more about our games and research, check out our website at centerforgamescience.org. Head over to BrainPOP’s GameUp to play our Treefrog Treasure and another one of our fraction games, Refraction!